Thursday, 27 October 2016

Doctor Strange: A Review

I've just got back from taking my son Harry to see Doctor Strange. I was going into this film a bit blind as I really didn't know anything about the character, my friend Dean said to me when we were talking about movies recently that his only knowledge of Doctor Strange is from the Marvel Top Trumps card game we used to play as kids and in that game Doctor Strange wasn't very good. However, before I went to see Ant-Man I wasn't a massive fan and the same can be said about Ironman but those are 2 of my favourite Marvel films and now 2 of my favourite superheroes.

Is Doctor Strange as good as Ironman or Ant-Man? No, But it is still damn good. I'm a massive fan of Benedict Cumberbatch's work however I did have my reservations about the American accent he would be using, after seeing the trailer it sounded like he was over emphasising his R's like a lot of English actors do when portraying an American. But, after a few minutes into the film I found my initial concerns to be unfounded as I completely bought into the fact that he was Stephen Strange.

Doctor Stephen Strange is a brilliant but arrogant surgeon who after a car accident is left with nerve damage to his hands and his career is over. After he tries all types of surgery in western medicine and is still no closer to getting his hands to stop shaking. So, he heads to Kathmandu for spiritual enlightenment in the hopes a more holistic treatment would yield better results. There he meets Mordo who introduces him to The Sorcerer Supreme known only as the Ancient One. There was a lot of controversy about the casting of Tilda Swinton, a white woman, as the Ancient One, an Asian man but you also have Chiwetel Ejiofor, a black man playing Mordo a white man and no one seemed to mention this, also Marvel have history in changing characters race and sex and as I wasn't familiar with these characters before it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the film..

Another of my favourite actors is Mads Mikkelsen, he was brilliant in Casino Royale and even better in Hannibal. Here he plays the main antagonist Kaecillius, a former student of the Ancient One who has stolen some pages from an old book that'll let him do some mystical stuff and allow the unseen big bad Dormammu to consume the Earth or some bollocks like that.

The entire film is very trippy, the effects are amazing and reminiscent of Inception. The final act of the film reminded me of Guardians of the Galaxy (which is probably what they were trying to do to tie the MCU together) and the acting is all very good. There is a lot of serious faces when they're discussing various magical mumbo jumbo but there is a lot of humour in this film too which is a common theme in MCU. Also, there are a couple of cameos to tie into other marvel films (Stan Lee being one, I won't spoil who the other one is).

Whilst not the best MCU film I really don't have anything bad to say about Doctor Strange it was a solid introduction to a new character and I'm looking forward to see where they go with him and how he will interact with the other Avengers.